Last weekend my partner's friend and his wife visited for 3 nights with their 2 sons (age 3 and 7). They were our first house-guests as we recently moved in together. I'd never met them before and was really looking forward to it. We have a 3-bed house and made spare room into a guestroom, with twin beds for the parents and a couple of sleeping-bags and camping-mats for the children. We assumed they'd want to share a room with their children, but when we showed them the guestroom they looked shocked and the dad made a joke about the kids keeping them awake all night!
Over dinner the mum started dropping hints about what we use our 3rd bedroom for, we explained it's our office. We didn't offer to let the children sleep in there as all our computer equipment, fragile electronics and paperwork etc is in there and it's a very small room.
Later that evening we were having drinks in living-room when the mum asked her husband (in front of us) if they should put the kids to bed in living-room and suggested the kids could sleep on sofas. My partner pointed out if they did that, the adults would then have nowhere to sit and socialise, unless we sat around table in kitchen which is not very comfortable (they put their kids to bed at 7pm). Also our sofas are rather delicate leather with electric tilt function so we didn't want children climbing on them or playing unsupervised in night. As an alternative my partner offered to bring the mattresses into living-room so parents could sleep there when we called it at night, but they declined.
All weekend they kept making comments about how badly they'd slept, as if sharing a room with their children was a big nuisance. Their sons seemed perfectly happy about sleeping arrangements and 7-year-old told me it was like 'a really fun sleepover!'
Were we unreasonable to expect them to share with their kids? Do most people provide 2 rooms for families? We don't have our own yet (one on the way) but assumed parents would want to share a room with children to keep an eye on them.